Businesses Can Now Purchase Apps In Volume From Apple’s App Store

If you own a business that relies on iOS devices, have you ever wished you could purchase apps in bulk and easily deploy them to all your employees? Even better, how would you like to be able to distribute apps made exclusively for your company across all the devices in your business? Apple has introduced Volume App Purchasing for Business, which aims to do both of those things.

This new system will work much like an online App Store where managers will be able to locate apps designed to be distributed using this method as well as read up their purchasing history. Using a volume purchasing account attached to corporate credit card or purchasing card, managers will be able to easily choose how many licenses they wish to get for each app and instantly purchase them. From there, they’ll be given special codes that will be emailed to each employee who can then redeem them, much like gift cards, and download the desired app instantly without any additional setup.

In addition to purchasing apps that already exist, Apple is also enabling business-to-business development. Through this method, company owners will be able to hire registered Apple developers to develop internal apps for their businesses that aren’t used or available anywhere else. Using this model, apps will have to be sold for a minimum amount of $9.99, and developers will have to approve their usage through a special interface before they can actually be pushed to company devices.

There are two big caveats to this new service. First, all apps will be sold at full price, meaning that there’s no discount for purchasing in bulk, which would be expected. Second, and maybe more importantly, employees must decide to install apps before they’re pushed to their devices, there’s no way to automate this process, which can be rather inefficient in a large business setting.

Overall, this is a great step forward for Apple in the business world, a market the company has always tried to conquer with varied degrees of success. Despite the drawbacks, this new model might place iOS devices in a much comfortable position to be adopted by businesses, big and small.

There’s no indication on when this service will become available, other than that it’s “coming soon”.